Friday, September 30, 2011

Putting Politics Into Football

Putting Politics Into Football

Oh man, if you thought I couldn't make football boring for you, then you're in for a surprise. Because I'm going to blow the roof off this mofo and lay down some football boredom on you. Woooooo!

But now that you know a football season is in store for you in a couple of months, perhaps we should take a look at college football and why pay for play could be disastrous

Don't worry, this is just a bit of light reading to start off your week.

There's a dark side to paying student-athletes to play college football.

Collective bargaining.

According to Michael Buckner, an attorney specializing in NCAA enforcement investigations and compliance issues, paying student-athletes could result in the formation of a players union. And that could lead to affiliation with powerful existing unions such as the Teamsters, as well as possible strikes to try to gain a substantial piece of college football's financial pie. That pie is "in the billions of dollars" according to Forbes sports business analyst Kristi Dosh. "Profits for just the schools broke the $1 billion mark in 2009," Dosh said.

With BCS conferences making lucrative deals with networks for broadcasting rights, the pie keeps getting bigger. Since the student-athletes can't legally grab a piece of it, many have turned to street agents, runners and boosters to supplement their income. If the rules-makers can't stop a kid from trading pants for tattoos, how can they expect to prevent an 18-year-old — with maybe $100 in his checking account — from listening to a union rep's lure of riches?

"A strike by college athletes would make the current work stoppages in the NFL and NBA look like child's play, and would impact more people and communities," Buckner said.

"The average number of people at college football games on any given Saturday is five million," Dosh said. That's a significant jump from the NFL's average stadium gameday attendance of 1.1 million. "Aside from the money generated just on game days, there's advertising, television revenues and licensing. The number of towns and enterprises [a work stoppage] touches would have much more of a far-reaching impact [than an NFL lockout]."

Penn State University's surrounding area is an example of the adverse effect a work stoppage could have on a local economy. According to the 2010 census, there are 42,034 residents in State College, Pa., but the Nittany Lions' Beaver Stadium can swell to over 107,000 fans on game days. Jose Felix, an employee at Marriott's Residence Inn State College, said half of the hotel's yearly profit comes from college football season, which is roughly six weekends a year. Penn State football season is to them what December is to retailers. You can get a room right now for $169, but on game days, "it starts at $349 and for bigger games, $399 and up," Felix said. "You have to call at least a year in advance for reservations."

How could paying student-athletes potentially lead to them unionizing?

"If the National Labor Relations Act or Congress defines college athletes as employees and universities are employers (and also rules that other provisions of the National Labor Relations Act apply to the relationship), then student-athletes would enjoy numerous rights, including the right to collectively bargain," Buckner said. "Receiving additional money does not by itself make a student-athlete an employee. Federal labor law must be applied to determine if student-athletes would be considered employees of their respective universities. Previous decisions of the National Labor Relations Board and federal courts have not defined the relationship between universities and college athletes as an employer-employee relationship."

But those decisions didn't reflect student-athletes being paid, other than receiving scholarships.

To unionize, student-athletes would have to file a petition with the NLRB to start organized labor proceedings, and 30 percent of them would have to attest that they were interested in forming a union, according to Nancy Cleeland, Director of Public Affairs for the NLRB.

If the student-athletes' financial-aid contracts were separate from their compensation contracts, becoming designated as employees would be easier to accomplish. And that would open the door to forming a union. Which could then open the door to organized labor making inroads into college football.

Dan Stormer, a top attorney in California specializing in labor and employment issues, when asked whether existing unions would be interested in college football, said "Absolutely. ... It could be a teachers' assistant union, it could be the Teamsters ... it could be anything," he said.

A college football strike would have a snowball effect on the rest of college sports, which rely heavily on football to fund their individual programs. "You take football out of the equation, and the athletic departments of BCS conferences can't function," Dosh said.

There are still some issues that could stop the pay-for-play movement. The biggest hurdle is Title IX, a federal law which states, in part, that no person under an educational umbrella shall be denied benefits on the basis of gender. "Any plan to pay student-athletes would have to adhere to federal law," Buckner said. If football players are paid, then somewhere, student-athletes in a women's sport will also have to be compensated.

The other big issue is the difficulty some smaller schools would face in coming up with the money to pay student-athletes. "The Big Ten Conference discussed a proposal that would pay student-athletes to help cover living expenses on top of their scholarships during the league's 2011 spring meetings," Buckner said. "Unfortunately, not all schools could afford to do so."

The prospect of a college football work stoppage is a fan's worst nightmare. Hearing crickets chirp on fall Saturdays across the country from Eugene, Ore., to Norman, Okla., to South Bend, Ind., to Baton Rouge, La., should give the pay-to-play movement pause.

Be careful what you wish for.
What the fuck, pay the athletes. Pay them all. Pay football players more, who fucking cares. Right? Because really, professional athletes might want decent compensation and working conditions in exchange for their services.

I bet you think that most of these kids shouldn't get this payment because they're just going to end up making a shit load of more money as professional athletes once they graduate. The answer to that is no.

It's only a small percentage of college athletes that are able to go pro, and only a small percentage of pro athletes make enough money to support themselves for the rest of their lives after retirement, when their long list of injuries, including many head injuries for football players come into play, and their spotty, devalued education just adds to the laundry list of things that make it difficult for them to support themselves in traditional employment, you'll probably think twice about the whole notion of abusing your body for a couple of years of glory.

Factor in that there's really no pro league at all for women which pays them anywhere near enough to live off for the rest of their lives. And none for athletes who choose a sport like track and field.

But I guess that's part of the problem. Those don't bring in the big bucks. There's no sport that really is revenue generating except the top men's football and basketball programs. Maybe you'll be lucky to get the women's basketball teams in there as well. But not all of those are really going to break the bank to pay the athletes a nontrivial amount. If you're going to justify athletics at all at Universities, you might as well pay the athletes though because chances are they aren't going to get it anywhere else.

Most pro players only play for a few years with a relatively normal NFL salary and have medical issues that eat up all of that money fairly quickly anyway. It's something like 80% of professional American football players end up going bankrupt within 3 years after they retire. Isn't that some shit. That's why you see them shilling their autograph for $20 at your local sports memorabilia shop.

Superstars make millions but the anonymous line players are probably making just an upper middle class salary for a few years. Then they have to quit and have no skills other than hitting people, a worthless degree, enduring physical injuries probably making it near impossible to get health insurance in this country, and are haunted by the specter of repeated concussions causing chronic traumatic brain injuries leading to a lot of suicide.

Not to long ago a former football player killed himself by shooting himself in the chest so that his brain could be examined for proof of the long term brain damage done by the sport. And you look at nerds foolishly for not wanting to have anything to do with High school sports?

Worse is when you think about the numbers. The mediocre college players are basically a dime a dozen. There's probably a few hundred NCAA schools graduating players every year and only 32 professional teams. You do the math there. I don't even think all of them are even on scholarships. So it ends up being a case where a lot of the second rate players are paying for their own crippling and exploitation.

And exploitation it is. These people produce entertainment spectacle at the expense of their own physical well-being to the tune of millions and millions of dollars for their schools, and they are exploited by them and the media for merchandising companies that partner with them.

College athletes should get all surplus value resulting from their labor. Just like all other workers should. And if you say that you get paid pretty well for your shitty work at the office job you have, but the company generates almost inhuman profits from said work, but you don't benefit from it, then it sounds like you and your co-workers should seize the means of production by any means necessary.

Because fuck, I bet you didn't know that the cheer leading industry was fucked beyond belief and it's wholly owned by the official uniform company that you have to be a slave to in order to display your body in front of a large crowd of gawking men salivating for violence.

You know how bad all this shit is? There's a great article about how the players are exploited and destroyed that had to be written by a baseball writer because the football journalists wouldn't touch it due to not wanting to be black listed by the NFL.

So yeah, that's why college sports are an abomination and American football is pretty barbaric bloodsport that makes its living off the broken bodies of anyone it can grasp on with this ideology that you'll some how be a big time baller who drops bills at 'da' club like it's nothing. At the very least we can pay them for destroying said body.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Women And Games...

Women And Video Games...

So apparently there's a mode in Dead Island that gives you a "Feminist Whore" power up..

Dead Island Maker Gives Leading Lady A "Feminist Whore" Skill

One of the unlockable skills for Dead Island leading lady Purna allows her to deal extra damage against male victims. It's called Gender Wars in the game, but the original skill was named "Feminist Whore." [UPDATED]

The errant bit of renamed text was discovered by a resourceful computer gamer who found the original skill name buried in the code for the non-retail version of the game that was accidentally sent to digital game store stream.

In the code, the game lists some of Purna's skills as "TeamSpirit1Purna", "SharpApprenticePurna" and "FeministWhorePurna".

Reached for comment this morning Techland confirmed that Feminist Whore was indeed the original name for the Gender Wars skill. The inappropriate name was caught by the developers and changed, they said, but remained in one debug, diagnostic file which ended up in the actual game.

Reached for comment this morning, publisher Deep Silver confirmed to Kotaku that the line of code was in an early build of the game.

"It has come to our attention that one of Dead Island's leftover debug files contains a highly inappropriate internal script name of one of the character skills. This has been inexcusably overlooked and released with the game," Blazej Krakowiak, Techland International Brand Manager, said via email. "The line in question was something a programmer considered a private joke. The skill naturally has a completely different in-game name and the script reference was also changed. What is left is a part of an obscure debug function. This is merely an explanation but by no means an excuse. In the end that code was made a part of the product and signed with our company name. We deeply regret that fact and we apologize to all our customers or anyone who might have been offended by that inappropriate expression.

"The person responsible for this unfortunate situation will face professional consequences for violating the professional standards and beliefs Techland stands for."

Why yes, "The line in question was something a programmer considered a private joke". The joke is "I'm misogynist lol". But hey, maybe whore is not an offensive word. why yes, I am a male, why do you ask? Am I not allowed to comment because of my gender?! Maybe the real sexist is... YOU!!!

Perhaps an apology should be issued to whores the world over for being associated with feminist. But really, just look at the character. She's wearing two belts and oversize combat boots. It looks terrible.



I have to wonder if this shit really effects anyone. I mean, does anyone not already see that video games are generally created by guys and have always come off as really insensitive to women. Do I even need to rehash this video of potential future video game developers.



I wouldn't blame you if you stopped that video half way through. It really is awful. And that's why video games have these jaw dropping awful pieces to them.

Like, I picked the black rapper guy in Dead Island and freaked out when I saw that one skilltree of his was called Fury where you build up Rage so you can chimp out but I guess all the characters have a Fury tree. Now I don't want to play the game because it seems aggressively mediocre.

But really, this is not by any means limited only to Dead Island. Look at this little piece I'm just going to drop right here in this blog post.



Gotta say, besides the outrageously racist stereotypes portrayed here, the motion capture on Keanu Reeves in that thing was pretty amazing.

Oh yeah, I can't help but mention this comment left in the article...
Generally speaking, what kind of guys do you think populate the video game programming industry? And how do you think they get treated by girls and women as they're growing up? Do they see many examples of them valuing intelligence or do they see them fawn over the jocks that are bullying them?

For the talk of misogyny among the game industry and gamers, I guess it's pretty easy to forget how guys that aren't macho stereotypes are subject to their own prejudice by the opposite sex. So, a little resentment towards women among "nerdier" men shouldn't be surprising. When men feel they're hated by women (whether it's true or just how they perceive it), it's only natural some of that hate is going to be returned. Does that make it ok? No, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that writing off this resentment as simply men only viewing women as sexual objects or just men behaving badly is overly simplified and lacks and empathic understanding of the problem. A little lecturing isn't going to fix this issue.
fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Again, let's take a look at what sort of writing for the characters can be found in this video game:



Why yes, carrying on the proud tradition of Australian cockney Jamaican accents. I wonder which bullies in the upbringing of that programer can be the fault of that.

Maybe I'm just being harsh. What if the character just happened to enjoy fried chicken and water melons? There's nothing inherently offensive about that, right? I bet you're wondering if the Asian woman who is pictured wielding a Katana speaks with a ridiculous accent? What do you think?



If you weren't downloading this game illegally before, you better be doing so now! Though, is this all that bad? The actual skill gives bonuses to kill men, so it sort of offsets the unusual title of the skill.

This problem will go on forever. I mean, just take a look at the sneak peak of the latest Resident Evil video game. Not only does the female character have stupid hair, but the article points out itself that the character also has a wet suit that has a huge fucking hole just perfectly placed to show off her tits. Lovely. It's pretty clear this shit will never go away.

Now if you excuse me, I gotta go play call of duty on my Xbox on this weekday afternoon while calling 12 year olds I'm playing against some stupid fucking Hadji.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Running For A Cause

Running For A Cause

Cause you want to stay alive is a perfectly reasonable reason to run. In fact, it's built into our systems in the sort of fight or flight instinct. If you don't have it then you are probably dead. Well, maybe not in the modern man. We're such big babies about all of that. But in any event, if you've ever wondered if you could survive a zombie infestation/outbreak, now is the time to put those skills to the test as you go to the Run For Your Life event.



The event is a 5k (3 mile) run from point A to point B with a lot of twist and turns in the middle in terms of paths to go through and zombies to out run. It's all a bit interesting but most of all it'll cost you to run as well as to watch out in the desert area of California. Where it's normally zombie towns the other 364 days out of the year.

Don't get me wrong this whole event sounds like a blast but I have to say I'm on the fence on this one. It sounds like it could be a great time and be lots of fun trying to outrun zombies, but then there's part of me that just wonders about how much fun it can actually be when you have 300-400 people running from a group of zombies.

I bet a lot of people get picked off in the crowds in the first few minutes. Then you have to factor in that the zombies may vary between the classic roamers to the fast moving bastards and you have a situation where it's going to be craaaa-zy.

You die when they take both of the flags that are hanging off your side. Which combines another aspect nerds never had to deal with -Flag football. But the event happens in SoCal on Oct. 20th. Which seems like it's perfect in terms of being right there for Halloween.

Then you have to factor in that the majority of zombie enthusiast are fat lazy nerds who probably couldn't run a mile if a real zombie was actually chasing them. Oh, don't worry, I'm also talking about me in that group. It's those of us who the whole post apocalyptic world of zombies appeals to.



Because really, it seems that the zombie talk isn't spreading as fast as the make believe virus..

The map reveals two important spatial patterns. First, much of the world lacks any content mentioning "zombies" whatsoever. Second, and related, the highest concentrations of zombies in the Geoweb are located in the Anglophone world, especially in large cities.

Oddly enough it also shows how Africa, the place where the word "zombie" originally came from, misses out on any of those criteria and really has no concern about zombies.

The results either provide a rough proxy for the amount of English-language content indexed over our planet, or offer an early warning into the geographies of the impending zombie apocalypse

So as you can see by the fact that there's even a zombie run as well as very little to no concern about zombies in the vast majority of non-first world areas, that this whole zombie scare is really a case of being a first world problem.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Drown The Rich

Drown The Rich

In the travels through the internet I came across something that.. well, is justification for a revolution if I ever seen one. Take a look for yourself.



A toilet that puts its own seat down?! Truly we live in a future world. I bet you're wondering at what cost such a shit throne set you back. The answer, my friends is $6,400.

Yes, that's right. Sixty-four hundred dollars for a toilet with a touchscreen remote. Coming to a Dubai skyscraper near you soon. I mean, I may talk shit but when you think about it, it may very well be a worthwhile investment... if you were rich.

In which case I highly suggest that we drown you.

Maybe not though. Drowning is actually a relaxing way to die, all things considered. Once it hits the last stages it's just all calming and what not. Burning them or letting them get mauled by some wild animal on the other hand sounds all sorts of justified. Unless burning alive makes you go out like a light due to the shock and mauling will sort of be the same once enough blood flows out. The biggest problem with this toilet is that it probably doesn't have the flushing power to drown someone.

Maybe what we should do is tie up rich people to a big steel slab and take them up on a big cargo plane, televise them pleading and begging and asking for forgiveness, then kick the steel slab out of the back of the plane and watch it crash into the white house...

Why hello there, FBI agent who is responsible for monitoring my blog today..

In all truth that's pretty silly. Killing anyone, especially the rich, beyond the necessary levels during the actual insurrection, is a dumb move and is nothing more than revenge fantasy. The rich are in actuality a valuable labor source that should be put to work fixing the ills they have created. Living out their lives devoid of the privilege they used to enjoy would also be much more torturous than any sadistic execution that I or anyone else can dream up.

Anyway, back to the future toilet - Finally! I say, a toilet with a larger carbon footprint than an entire poor family in Africa!




Though, living in a first world I have to face the music that every toilet is a bigger carbon footprint than any family can produce in Africa. Sewage treatment is a marvel of socialism and quite possibly one of mankind's most important accomplishments, but it ain't carbon neutral by a long shot.

Though I wish I had a bidet, cause honestly sometimes the hose chafes and I think my neighbors might call the cops on me. Don't even talk to me about toilet paper, as it rips the shit out of my asshole every time. Though that's really the only way I know I'm alive.

It is nice to think about. How having a super shitter that made every bathroom experience enjoyable would be pretty great, but honestly the touchscreen remote is a bit overkill on the whole thing. I pooped yesterday and I never even noticed that I didn't have a remote control to flush the toilet with when I was done. What a fool I must have been not realizing what I was missing.

How Bourgeois of me. What next, I'm going to be asking for that other bathroom product by Kohlers in that wall jets and 150 gpm shower heads? Maybe I just want a warm seat and bidet to complete my life. How wrong is that?

Sunday, September 25, 2011

At The Boardwalk... BOARDWALK

At The Boardwalk... BOARDWALK

So one of my favorite shows of the last year is coming back in full force. Why is it a good show? Well, it deals with a subject near and dear to my heart. Prohibition and the bootlegging days during it.

There's a set of great teasers to pump you up as well....



It looks like the show is going to get even better, which means my ass is there. Sunday nights in the fall are going to be just as awesome as they have been the last few months.



And one more for good measure....



If you at all liked the period that it's taking place in for either the look, the fashion, the visuals, it's worth checking out. The acting is amazing and this next clip will show you just how the look is perfectly hammered down.

Boardwalk Empire VFX Breakdowns of Season 1 from Brainstorm Digital on Vimeo.



Besides that it has Kelly MacDonald in it. Even if they're using a body double for the nudity, it's still worth it. Which brings up a good point. It's odd that she got a body double considering she was topless in Trainspotting. Though that was 15 years ago when she was just 20.

Anyhow, the show is great and it has Omar from The Wire. What more can you ask for?

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Death Sentnce Is Certain......

Death Sentence Is Certain......

...ly an option. Especially when I read things like this:
"For many Americans, agreement with the assertion that innocent people have been put to death does not preclude simultaneous endorsement of the death penalty."
Yes, that's right. Even though people are fully aware that innocent people have been sentenced and put to death by our government in this "blind justice" system, they are still fully supportive of it.

It's something that should have been an excellent talking point and effective at illustrating how what we have is just a 21st century lynching when it comes to the death sentence. Especially in the case of the death sentence a few days ago of Troy Davis.

Speaking of which, perhaps this should be something everyone reads:

To All:

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”
It really is tragic. It's also very upsetting when Warden Carl Humphry began the process of his execution by reading the execution order signed by Chatham County Judge Penny Haas Freesmann. "The court have sentenced defendant Troy Anthony Davis on the third day of September, 1991, to be executed..."

Then he asked Davis if he has any final words. He did. The condemned man raised his head so he could look at Mark MacPhail Jr., who was an infant when his father was murdered, and William MacPhail, the dead officer's brother. "I'm sorry for your loss," Davis said.

Mark MacPhail, who was leaning forward, and his uncle did not move. They stared at the man who killed their loved one. All the while he just said "I did not personally kill your son, father and brother," Davis said. "I am innocent." He asked his family and friends to continue to search for the truth. And to the prison officials he said "May God have mercy on your souls. May God bless your souls."

So now if somebody ever does find evidence that it was really somebody else, they'll be dismissed with "No need to look into it, a man was executed for it already, what more evidence do you want?"

All of which just makes me hate America so much. Well, not really hate America. Just the piss poor justice system we have. But hey, maybe I shouldn't be surprised that America killed another minority. It's like 1 every 57 seconds these days, right?



Oh Haiti Pride, you so crazy. It's sad that I thought people like that only existed in parody. But here we are and well, I don't know what to say.

But hey, at least those poor saps on death row get one good meal before they get injected with instant death, right? Well not anymore.
Texas death row inmates will no longer get their choice of last meals, after the menu request of a man condemned for a notorious hate crime slaying left a bad taste in the mouth of a prominent senator.

Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was executed on Wednesday, asked for two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound (450 grams) of barbecue meat, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice-cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.

Prison officials said Brewer didn't eat any of it.

Brewer, a white supremacist gang member, was convicted of chaining James Byrd jnr, 49, to the back of a pick-up truck and dragging him to his death along a bumpy road in 1998.

Brewer's dinner request prompted Senator John Whitmire to demand the end of the practice in a letter to Brad Livingston, the executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

"It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege," Whitmire, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, wrote in the letter on Thursday.

Within hours, Livingston said the senator's concerns were valid and the practice of allowing death row offenders to choose their final meal was history.

"Effective immediately, no such accommodations will be made," Livingston said.

"They will receive the same meal served to other offenders on the unit."

Man, death row inmates really seem to enjoy meat. And I guess one could ask what's the point of asking for food in quantities you couldn't possible eat all of.

You have to think that if you're going to die, you might as well just pick at everything until you're fucking stuffed beyond belief. I know if I were them, I'd want to spend my last moments on earth feeling tremendously bloated, burping and farting all the way down that green mile. Then once there and given my death stroke, boy will I not be a fast clean up job.

It really does come down to being a pretty good "fuck you" to order so much stuff and then not touch a bit of it. In fact, more inmates should do that. Well. I guess now they can't. But whatever. Way to stick it to the man. You didn't fail to take that final chance to troll the fuck out of the U.S government.

Besides that, there's plenty of reasons to choose this route and go all out. Maybe you want to share with the guards and other inmates who you bribed the guards to let you eat with one final time before you're put to death.

How about if you just want to piss off the prison or the media as a whole in a method to make a social commentary on the prison system itself. Not to mention that this is the first time in decades that you will have too much to eat instead of not enough.

Not to mention that it's the guy's last chance to eat something other than the prison shit food that you've been chowing down on since the Reagan administration and you may want to be able to taste a little bit of everything without having to worry about it.

This is, after all, the first thing you have had control over in the past 20 years of your long prison stay. It also happens to be the last decision you will ever make. So why the fuck not have it your way for once.

Why not? Well, it seemed to piss off the Texas correction board so no more.

Friday, September 23, 2011

An Observation

An Observation

Woah, Is it fall season again? Looks like it since Fringe is back on the air tonight. Oh, you haven't caught up? Here's a teaser for this upcoming season



Yes! It's time for a whole new season of Fringe. The show that takes two realities to tell one story. I wonder what will be discovered or forgotten this season?



This is not really much of an effort post. I'll just leave all these spots that the network made to promote the show in the past..

American Idol




Nascar



MLB


Glee


NFL


That one was a lot more subtle than the rest. You really had to be looking for them on that one.

In any case, you'll get more fringe tonight. One more teaser..



And on an unrelated/related note - I have to say that one of the best promotions for comic con was the alternative universe bags that WB was giving out to pimp out this show.



Here’s your first look at the official Fringe-themed swag bag Warner Bros. will be distributing upon check-in at Comic-Con 2011 — one of 10 collectable carryalls the studio is producing for the five-day geekapalooza.

And this is the year the traditional 200-gallon tote goes high-tech: For the first time, the bags convert into backpacks! And don’t panic, the poster tube remains in tact.

Seems pretty standard, don't you think. But then you'll be amazed that there was a select few who got this bag instead...



A fringe alternative universe bag. It's like comic con is happening in the other world. I bet the cool people go to that one and all the nerds make fun of them for it. It's like the zanny opposite of it all.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

I Want My Justice - The Death Penalty

I Want My Justice - The Death Penalty

What the fuck, America. The justice system here is the god damn worse. Take this story of an inmate trying to fight for his right to live...
[Updated at 10:16 a.m. ET] The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied to reconsider their decision denying clemency to Troy Davis.

Supporters of Davis have been hoping that some last-ditch efforts might help save him from being executed on Wednesday night. Earlier Wednesday his team filed an appeal asking to stay his execution.

[Posted at 9:13 a.m. ET] Attorneys for Troy Davis, facing execution in Georgia at 7 p.m. Wednesday, have filed a request to stay his execution in Butts County Superior Court.

Davis is scheduled to die by lethal injection Wednesday night in Jackson, Georgia, for the 1989 shooting death of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail.

The parole board declined to grant Davis clemency Tuesday following a hearing Monday in which it heard testimony calling into question physical evidence and witness statements that a Chatham County jury relied on in convicting Davis in 1991. In Georgia, only the board - not the governor - has the right to grant clemency.

Since Davis' conviction, seven of the nine witnesses against him have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Davis' supporters say the original witnesses were fearful of police and spoke under duress.

Other witnesses also have since come forward with accounts that call Davis' conviction into question, according to his supporters.
Troy Davis was put to death last night.. They literally injected him with drugs used to put down household pets at veterinarians and animal shelters. If that's not some sort of social commentary on the state of race relations, I don't know what is.

But sure enough at 11:08pm last night, we made a man immortal. It really is only a matter of time before executions are televised on Pay-Per-View. Worse of all Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who secured Davis' conviction in 1991, said he as embarrassed for the judicial system -- Not because of the execution, but because it has taken so long to carry out.

"What we have had is a manufactured appearance of doubt which has taken on the quality of legitimate doubt itself. And all of it is exquisitely unfair," said Lawton, who retired as Chatham County's head prosecutor in 2008. "The good news is we live in a civilized society where questions like this are decided based on fact in open and transparent courts of law, and not on street corners."

Fucking hell. If that's not scummy I don't know what is. But while we're mentioning scummy shit, let's take a look at our judicial system. One that allows Troy to die and yet when you compare it to this story:
HUNTSVILLE, The Great Shit Wastes – A former Army recruiter who for the third time this year was hours away from his scheduled execution for the rape-slaying of a woman in Fort Worth nearly 10 years ago was granted yet another reprieve by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Cleve Foster, 47, was set to die Tuesday evening.

The high court twice earlier this year stopped Foster's scheduled lethal injection. The latest court ruling came about 2 1/2 hours before Foster could have been taken to the The Great Shit Wastes death chamber.

Foster was meeting with one of his lawyers in a small holding cell a few steps from the death chamber when a The Great Shit Wastes Department of Criminal Justice spokesman delivered the news.

"He thanked God and pointed to his attorney, saying this woman helped save his life," prison spokesman Jason Clark said.

He also said Foster repeated his insistence that he was innocent.

"I did not do this crime," Foster told him. "I know there are those out there who have hard feelings against me, but I did not do this."

Unlike his previous trips to the death house, the reprieve came before he was served his requested final meal, which included two fried chickens and a five-gallon bucket of peaches.

Instead, he immediately was returned to death row, at a prison about 45 miles to the east.

Foster was one of two men convicted and sent to death row for fatally shooting a 30-year-old woman whose body was found in a ditch by pipeline workers in Fort Worth in February 2002. His partner died last year of cancer.

The court's brief order, similar to one issued last week in the case of Duane Buck, another The Great Shit Wastes inmate facing execution, said the reprieve would remain in effect pending the outcome of Foster's request for a review, known as a petition for a writ of certiorari. If the writ is denied, the reprieve is lifted, clearing the way for a new execution date to be set.

In January, just before the start of a six-hour window when Foster could be strapped to the death chamber gurney for injection, he won a reprieve so the justices could further review an appeal in his case. Then in April, the high court again halted his execution when lawyers sought a rehearing on arguments he was innocent and had poor legal help at his trial and in early stages of his appeal.

His lawyers returned to the court with similar arguments he was innocent and had previous deficient legal help, specifically asking the court to decide whether prisoners like Foster had a constitutional guarantee for a competent lawyer when he first raised claims in a state appeals court. State lawyers said the issues had been resolved by the courts, that the Supreme Court has ruled there's no constitutional right to a competent state-provided lawyer for appeals, and the last-day appeal was just another attempt to delay Foster's punishment.

Foster would have been the 11th The Great Shit Wastes prisoner executed this year. On Wednesday, Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, was set to die for participating in the notorious dragging death case in Jasper in East The Great Shit Wastes. Brewer was one of two white men condemned for the death of a black man, James Byrd Jr., more than 13 years ago, in a hate crime that shocked the nation for its brutality.

Foster was one of two men convicted and sent to death row for fatally shooting Nyaneur Pal. Her body was found on Valentine's Day 2002.

"I didn't do this," he said recently from outside his cell on death row. "I'll fight it to the end."

Foster and a companion, Sheldon Ward, were convicted of fatally shooting Pal, who came to the U.S. from Sudan and was known as Mary. Pal, who worked at a country club, was seen talking with Foster and Ward at a Fort Worth bar. Evidence showed she had been shot once in the head and raped.

A gun identified as the murder weapon was found in a motel room where Foster and Ward were living. Authorities determined the same gun was used two months earlier to kill another woman, 22-year-old Rachel Urnosky, at her Fort Worth apartment. She also had been raped.

Foster and Ward were implicated but never tried in her slaying.

An aunt and uncle of Pal and the parents of Urnosky were to witness the execution. They had not yet arrived at the Huntsville Unit of the The Great Shit Wastes Department of Criminal Justice, where executions are carried out, when the court ordered the punishment stopped.

Foster blamed Pal's death on Ward, who was one of his Army recruits. Prosecutors said evidence showed Foster actively participated in the woman's killing, offered no credible explanations, lied and gave contradictory stories about his sexual activities with Pal.

Her blood and tissue were found on the weapon and DNA evidence showed both men had sex with her. Ward said the sex was consensual. Foster said he was passed out from sleeping pills at the time Pal would have been murdered.


Ward died of cancer last year while on death row.

Foster also denied any involvement in Urnosky's slaying in December 2001. He told detectives he and Ward were at her apartment but they left when she refused to have sex with them. The The Great Shit Wastes Tech honors graduate was found dead in her bed after she failed to show up for work.

In appeals, attorneys referred to Ward's several statements claiming sole responsibility for Pal's murder.

"The most striking feature of Ward's `confessions' is that they are incompatible with each other," state lawyers said in their responses to the appeals courts.

Foster grew up in Henderson, Kentucky, and spent nearly two decades in the Army, reaching the rank of sergeant first class. He was deployed to the Middle East during Desert Storm and was assigned to Fort Worth as a recruiter. Records showed court martial proceedings were started against him after allegations he gave alcohol to underage students as a recruiter and had sex with an underage potential recruit. He was denied re-enlistment in the Army and had been out of the service only a short time when the slayings occurred.
The TL;DR of it is that this piece of shit got his stay of execution. So I bet you're wondering what the difference is. I hate to imagine that you can't already tell why one was put to death and the other is still sucking up tax dollars on appeals. One was black and one was white. You guess which was which.





What's even more egregious about all this is that there is far more evidence that Foster did in fact rape and murder that woman, where as in Troy Davis' case:
- 7 of 9 witnesses recanted testimony that they feel was provided under police duress. And what is my favorite part on this is 1 of the 2 that have no recanted is a person who was suspected to be the shooter.

- No physical evidence from the crime was retrieved, apart from the bullets and shell casings, which were determined to have come from a .38-caliber pistol.

- The casings were never conclusively linked to a gun Troy Davis used

- Dorothy Ferrell, for example, stated in a 2000 affidavit that she felt under pressure from police to identify Davis as the shooter because she was on parole for a shoplifting conviction.[44] In a 2002 affidavit, Darrell Collins wrote that the police had scared him into falsely testifying by threatening to charge him as an accessory to the crime, and alleged that he had not seen Davis do anything to Young

- Legal experts argued that a major obstacle to granting Davis a new trial was the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, passed after the Oklahoma City bombing, which bars death row inmates from later presenting evidence they could have presented at trial. Members of the legal community have criticized the restricting effect of the 1996 Act on the ability of wrongfully convicted persons to prove their innocence
So basically under the same probable reasons that a white man was entitled to doubt, the black man gets to be killed because if he's not, the police will not bother looking into the case to find the actual murderer. So it's pretty clear - Being white is the best.


And don't believe that claim? Realize this:
The State introduced evidence regarding Mr. Davis’s “bloody” shorts. (See Resp. Ex. 67.) However, even the State conceded that this evidence lacked any probative value of guilt, submitting it only to show what the Board of Pardons and Parole had before it. (Evidentiary Hearing Transcript at 468-69.) Indeed, there was insufficient DNA to determine who the blood belonged to, so the shorts in no way linked Mr. Davis to the murder of Officer MacPhail. The blood could have belonged to Mr. Davis, Mr. Larry Young, Officer MacPhail, or even have gotten onto the shorts entirely apart from the events of that night. Moreover, it is not even clear that the substance was blood. (See Pet. Ex. 46.)
It sure is nice to know that members of the military can get away with murder and rape at home as well as abroad. Then there's this piece that just speaks volumes of truth..
We cannot understand the killing Davis outside of a long history of lynching Black men (and women and children) for crimes that they didn’t commit and often, when no crimes were even alleged. Lynchings were frequently committed just for sport, while white families brought their children along and hosted picnics as happy spectators. These days conservative (white) Americans fancy themselves more civilized than their bloodthirsty ancestors, but I submit that the state sanctioned murder of Black men based on dubious, trumped up, and coerced evidence is just lynching remixed for a new generation.
But hey, this isn't like it's racial profiling or anything... Just look at this article from the huff post about 2 officers indicted in beating of a university of Maryland student named John McKenna. I'm going to give you one guess as to what race McKenna is. Just guess.



Gee, thanks for the countdown CNN. You win the prize on how to make this unnecessarily morbid process even more so. It's pretty clear that Georgia just wanted to fucking kill this guy and be done with it because hey, the south is fucking terrible and in every possibly way, still backwards as fuck.

In what world is this not considered cruel and unusual to say you're going to execute someone and then do a last minute temporary delay. Followed up by the actual execution. I guess it's almost as cruel as holding someone on death row for a crime they didn't commit, then executing them anyway.

Though I'm sure that there's a long list of things that happen, up to and including the government ending your life. So maybe playing a little "gotcha" doesn't stick out as the most cruel part of it all.

I guess the comfort I can get out of this is that protesting the death penalty is a great first experience of political activism. It's full of the highs and lows and false hopes and last minute news. It ultimately impresses on you the complete indifference of the system and your powerlessness in the face of it.

Because technically Obama could have stopped this within an executive order. Or maybe just issuing a pardon, despite "how bad it would look" But hey, maybe he just can't spend that political capital just yet. It's like Apple stock. That shit is something worth a lot but you don't want to give up any time soon.

Besides that, if I was to have Obama stop anything, I would probably as him to stop the use of predator droning civilians all over the middle east. But we know that shit ain't happening, so fuck it, I guess.

Really, the only comfort I get out of this were his last words:
I'm innocent. To the people about to take my life, may god have mercy on your souls
That just makes me immensely sad. Even sadder than when I see those adoption/abused pets ad on the television..

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

The Deadliest Warrior - Saddam Strikes Back

The Deadliest Warrior - Saddam Strikes Back

Every now and then whenever I feel like I don't hate myself enough or to see how clearly fucking drunk I am, I like to flip the channels and land on SpikeTV. If Manswers is on I will just commit suicide, but if they are showing what has to be one of the worse shows around, The Deadliest Warrior, I'll tune in to see how terrible this sucker can actually be.

The answer to that is "God damn insane" The show is basically made up of picking two random things in history and pitting them against each other for no reason other than they can. In this instance they did something really fucking crazy - They pitted Saddam vs Pol Pot



You have to love the little speech they did about how this episode is totally okay because it's important to understand evil so you can smash it when it rears it head. We need to smash it with a Carthaginian battle flail which can crush a pigs' carcass at 20 rods!

We have to investigate this evil! our first warrior:
Sadam hussein 6'2 215lbs - big guy

Pol Pot 5'9 194lbs
HAHAHAHAHAHAHKJSLDJKSALKJASLKDJS Fuck...

Okay, let's move on..



POL POT USES "CRUSH INTELLECTUALS"! ITS SUPER EFFECTIVE!
You sort of have to love this shit in a sick and twisted manner when you're completely drunk because it's a huge spectacle that makes no fucking sense. Though maybe I was just watching the Star Wars prequels. Spike seems to show those a lot also.

Anyhow, back to shooting latex dummies that are filled with strawberry jam...



It's comical to watch when the Cambodian dude comes in out of nowhere and they start playing mournful cello music after they just blew up a car and talked about the "intimidation fact" of "seeing your leader with his chest on the floor"

Now I bet you're wondering who won this little cluster fuck. I mean, you don't really want to watch all that and NOT realize who came out as the ultimate evil. Though I'm pretty sure you're guessing it's Saddam. Well, here's a little shitty cam version of the final battle.



I have to say, that's pretty good action scenes for a low budget SpikeTV show. Here I thought they blew all their money trying to get Entourage.

So yeah, spoiler alert: Saddam Hussein pops the last Khmer rouge in the head after surviving a car ambush/Car crash in a ripped and dirty white t-shirt all Die Hard style. And then he does a little fist pump at the end saying Allah Ackbar.

A bath party boss saying Allah Ackbar is pretty icky. I mean, just think of it. A Panarabist atheist boss of a party founded by a Syrian Christian dude saying Allah Ackbar is just all sorts of proof of good research done in preparation to all this. Arkana would be proud of this.

It's hilarious towards the end where they used results from each "Test" and "plugged the numbers" into a "simulation program" that looked like excel full-screened. Supposedly created by experts. Then I guess it said which side won and then they had a mock battle based on it. Not to mention that the weapon choices are all so arbitrary.

Back to the victory itself. Of course Saddam would have won this. He had to be toppled by America where as not even America could prop up Pol Pot. It just reeks of showing off how awesome America is. But this is all moving past the point that the fight made no fucking sense.

At the very least they could provide some sort of minimal framing narrative for the final battle, like, imagine if Iraq shot a scud at Cambodia, forcing Pol Pot to invade in retaliation.

I wonder if they'll do FDR versus Kubhilai Khan, which would make equal enough sense. That just seems to be the way this show works. They once did a Viking vs Samurai battle and the vikings didn't even have boats. They literally gave no regard for context or reason for fighting beyond it being like a Video game where they wanna smash at each other until all the hit points are gone.

It's terrible when they talk about their revolutionary battle simulation system that they use to determine the outcomes. I assume it is just a Microsoft excel spreadsheet. Why yes, this revolutionary battle simulation system that's made by game designers.. in fact, the very skilled game designer who made the deadliest warrior game.

Which I guess is part of the problem. You can feel that the creators of this are just pitting two random groups/people/class against each other without rhyme or reason. Just cause they can. Hell, they had one where they pitted the IRA vs The Taliban. It was really bad and had stated that the IRA's secret weapon was a fucking slingshot. I'm surprised that they didn't give the Taliban an airplane as a secret weapon.

And if you thought that one was odd, you haven't seen anything till you've seen Nazi's vs. Vietcong.



Let's just take a moment to reflect on what was just shown. The Vietcong were poor farmers fighting in defense of their country from another imperialistic invasion and they just got lumped into the same category as the Nazis.

Besides that, the Vietcong fought nearly 30 years of continuous war against France and the US and got both of them to crawl home licking their wounds and muttering about "Soviet aid." The SS weren't even close to the best soldiers in the Wehrmacht, like not even in the same conversation.

Honestly, how did they even come to the realization that the SS would be able to kill the Vietcong, unless the battle was framed in the context of fighting in the mall of America. Even then, I bet the Vietcong would find some way to wage psychological guerrilla warfare by posing as ride operators and Starbucks Baristas.



It's really strange that people believe the Waffen SS were the "elite" of the third reich's army. There was a good number of units of extremely capable Waffen SS, especially in the Panzergrenadier division but by the war's end in 1944 it was a mish-mash of highly experienced veterans and fanatical nutjobs with no tactical abilities beyond rushing at enemy tanks screaming loudly like in a very bad match of company of heroes.

It's also not like the most terrifying SS divisions weren't all mechanized or armored, which sounds like a great way to fuck yourself over in a fictional engagement with the Vietcong. Just imagine a Tiger II tank getting stuck in the mud and how long it will take along with how much man power it uses up to get it out.



One that really pissed off a lot of people was Samurai vs Ninja's. Though they totally used the ninja that everyone sees today and thinks is accurate for some reason. The ninja you see in literally anything ever are about as accurate as the assassins of assassin's creed are to their actual crusades-era namesakes. The real "ninja" probably resemble a more mercenary feudal version of the IRA than a bunch of mystical shadow warriors

When you think about it, Ninjas are really proletarian heroes. Well, not so much proletarian but heroes to the proletariat. You know what I mean.. I hope. But setting them up as some elite shadow monsters is a disservice to all the upper class parasite blood those brave peasants spilled.

What also annoys me about the show is how serious the host are. And then when you realize they are all ex-navy seals, the supposed elite fighting force of the United states, it just makes you realize how awful the industrial military complex really is. But I guess that's all in the contract. They must tell them that if they act serious and play with historic weaponry on camera, they'll pay them two million dollars a year. So it's really not that hard to understand why they all seem to have raging hard-on's for this shit.

Though it is pretty scary when you consider the number of very public fuck-ups by the "elite" tactical groups that war porn junkies like to go nuts over, like the seals can't even kill a dude without losing a multi-million dollar helicopter to the Chinese and the Mossad gets the details of their operations caught on tape because they know there will be no retribution, well I think the general conclusion should be that their mystical reputation is a Hollywood fabrication at best.

Don't see it the same? Well, the Elite super soldiers with multimillion dollar individual gears have been known to do the following things:
* keep the lights running and kill the batteries on their vehicles and thus aborting the mission
* shoot at each other in the presence of enemies
* shoot at each other in the absence of enemies
* treat their night observation devices like cinder blocks and breaking them (weird since they are pretty tough)
* break bones in their feet through improper manipulation of live ammunition (break a foot through carl gustav rocket dropped on foot)
* turning up drunk for work
* turning up high for work
* somehow confusing cover and concealment
* believing in America
But even if these war porn fuckers are deciding which evil to smash first, the dumbest shit of all this is when they did William Wallace vs Shaka Zulu. Shaka Zulu's mid-ranged weapon was spitting a poison mist, so they got some doctor to talk about what would happen if he spit in your eyes. He goes on about how it would be extremely painful and probably rob you of at least part of your vision, but then comes to the same stupid question the show's idiot hosts trot out every single fucking episode -
"But would it be a killing blow?"
And of course it won't, so their glorified excel spreadsheet puts down a '0' in the kills column under poison spit and Shaka loses because his weapons just aren't deadly enough, and holy fuck this is very likely what goes for enlightened military analysis in America. To be honest, I shouldn't be surprised by any of this.

Just remember that when America intervened in Haiti in the 90's, enlisted men were given briefings on watching out for witch doctors with poison blow dart guns. Literally. In the 90's. This was Official Warning Information.



I guess the lesson to take away from all this is you shouldn't watch SpikeTV.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Playstation Training

Playstation Training

Now that the rebels have pretty much toppled Gadaffi's forces, I thought it would be interesting to take a look and see how these rebel forces got training to take down a deadly dictator:

KABAW, Libya — From the street, the operation run by a former army engineer known to the Libyan rebels as Rambo looks like an ordinary auto repair shop. Inside, a dozen of Omar Said’s mechanics are busy turning pickup trucks into armored fighting vehicles, complete with aging anti-aircraft guns.

What the Libyan rebels lack, they scavenge. Popular now: a portable launcher for firing an old Russian S-5 air-to-surface rocket from your shoulder. Components: four feet of drain pipe and a trigger made from a hair dryer. Range: about 2 1 / 2 miles.

Sitting next to a cannibalized Volvo sedan are two confiscated Libyan army tanks. “They were broken,” said Takek Issa, a local fighter. “It took us only a day to get them running.”

Leaders of opposition forces fighting here along the ragged spine of western Libya’s Nafusa Mountains boast that they would be able to storm into the capital, Tripoli, in a matter of days — if only they had more, and bigger, weapons.

“Our problem is weapons. We need them, but we don’t have them,” said Col. Tarek Zanpou, who commands the 250 fighters in the Berber town of Kabaw. “Half of my men go into battle without a gun.”

Zanpou, a former intelligence officer in Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s army, said the rebels have only the arms they seize from fleeing government forces. It has been impossible, he said, to bring weapons into the mountains because the Tunisian government won’t allow them to cross their border and forces loyal to Gaddafi control the roads on the other three sides.

Rebel commanders say that while they depend for their lives on the NATO warplanes that have grounded Gaddafi’s air force and helicopters, a lack of arms is crippling their ability to push the fight forward and end the five-month civil war.

The scarcity of guns was visible Wednesday when rebels battled troops loyal to Gaddafi around the contested town of al-Qualish.

Many of the rebels who jumped into pickup trucks to roar into battle carried nothing. Young men hitched rides from the rebel stronghold of Zintan to the front lines, hoping to grab a rifle from a retreating or captured soldier.

In the hillsides, opposition forces shot S-5 rockets at the Gaddafi troops from homemade launchers, with firing fuses ignited by car batteries and switches made from disassembled military radios.

Rebels say they aim their rockets by eyeball. An older soldier with the opposition, Moktar Zintani, said sometimes they use spotters with satellite phones to help find targets. “They say, ‘A little to the left, a little to the right,’ ” Zintani said.

At a rebel military headquarters, seized rockets, shells, flares and grenades filled old wooden crates. A soldier pointed out a box containing four brown tubes. He said, “We want to shoot that, but we don’t know what it is.”

Asked about their military training, a group of Berber rebels from the coastal town of Zuwarah answered, “Medal of Honor.” They explained it’s a first-person shooter video game popular on PlayStation.

Here, they are engaged in a game with deadly consequences. In the fighting Wednesday, at least eight rebels soldiers were killed and more than two dozen wounded, according to hospital workers in Zintan.

Although NATO enforces a no-fly zone over Libya, it appears to allow rebel flights that shuttle personnel, food, medicine — and allegedly some weapons and communications equipment — between rebels in the eastern city of Benghazi and a stretch of two-lane highway here in the west.

On Monday, two reporters watched a four-engine jet take off from the highway and climb quickly into the sky.

“It is true that there are not enough rifles for the fights. But we don’t need the Kalashnikovs so much. We need the guns that can fire these,” said Col. Muhammad Khabasha, holding up a large 50-caliber bullet.

“Gaddafi is a murderer,” said Khabasha, a rebel leader here who said he served for 34 years in the Libyan army before defecting this spring. “With this bullet, I would like to kill him.”
Medal of Honor? Medal of fucking honor?! You have to be kidding me. How the hell did they win against the security forces? Playing Medal of Honor for training is pretty tragic. No one plays MoH anymore. You might as well be training on Quake 3.

Wait, on second thought no. It's not better to train on Quake 3. Those poor bastards. You'll lose half your platoon on attempts to rocket jump.

To be honest, these rebels should have started with Call of Duty. At least it had a "you don't get a gun because you are grist for the war-machine" level. Which would have better equipped rebel forces in what they'll more than likely be fighting with.

Besides that, if it was Call of Duty, I'm sure that it wouldn't have taken the six months to actually topple this shit. Maybe the US should have just sold them some guns to help them out.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Capitalism

Capitalism

While I know that the internet is filled with A.) Stupid people and B.) Stupid videos, I don't think I have seen such two items come together along with C.) Stupid Opinions to make the ultimate stupid point.

But hey, enjoy:




The scary part is that it's really a website with way more inside..
Pre-capitalism: Death Never Far
In Western Europe, before the development of capitalism in the late 1700s, life for many Western Europeans was similar to life for nearly everyone else in the world at the time. Merely surviving was an immense struggle, and, on average, people were not expected to live beyond the age of 30. [1]

Famine in Western Europe was common as was the mass death that accompanied it.

Poverty was so severe that the following were considered luxuries usually available only to the upper classes: shoes, clothes without holes, adequate warmth, candles for light, eating utensils, windows, fresh air, bathing more than once a month, healthcare, an education.

Work, assuming one could find it, usually consisted of dangerous, tedious, unrelenting and exhausting manual labor. And preparing a simple meal or performing routine household chores took precious hours. Homes made of dirt and sticks that collapsed on top of people were common as was all-pervading filth, including raw sewage running through the streets. Disease was nearly unavoidable for rich and poor alike.

The children of this unsafe, filthy, and impoverished pre-capitalism world were hit hardest. The mortality rate for infants under one year was at least 30%, and the rate for all children from birth to 19 years was at least 50%. In some areas, child mortality was nearly 100%. And it was not uncommon for surviving children as young as four to work to help ensure that their families did not become gravely impoverished.[2]


Capitalism The Savior
Capitalism ended this nightmare for Western Europeans. In a historical blink of an eye, it virtually wiped out poverty, countless diseases, hunger, child mortality, human misery and the need for child labor — and ushered in, for hundreds of millions of people, unprecedented levels of wealth, health, and abundance. Life expectancy in Western Europe, as a result, more than doubled to at least the age of 75.

Capitalism also emerged in the United States in the 1800s as well as other nations settled by Western Europeans—resulting in similar life-enriching benefits. In the mid- to late-20th century, capitalism spread to Asia, immensely improving life in many nations, such as Japan and South Korea. And, currently, capitalism is responsible for lifting millions from poverty in other parts of Asia, including India and China.

Wherever capitalism has been tried, the result without exception has been a rapid and dramatic improvement of the human condition. The United States embraced capitalism more than any other nation and, as a result, achieved the most progress.

Industrialization
Capitalism succeeds, in part, because it takes scientific discoveries and knowledge and applies them in the form of factories and the goods they produce. Industrialization, which is a product of capitalism, is essentially science and mind power put into practical use for the benefit of humanity.

Industry makes possible mass production which increases the quantity and diversity of goods available. In other words, capitalism and industrialization create wealth. This increased wealth results in easier, safer and better lives. It allows people to afford, for example, adequate clothing, safe homes, transportation, health care, education, leisure time – not to mention the countless life-enhancing and time-saving conveniences of the modern world.

Famine in industrialized civilization is unheard of; industry is vital to producing food in abundance, and it makes possible the storage and transportation systems required to bring it to everyone.

In addition, the wealth produced by industry allows for costly undertakings that were unthinkable in the centuries before capitalism. These undertakings include sewage systems and water treatment that prevent disease and dramatically improve the quality and longevity of human life.

Capitalism also prevents millions of deaths worldwide each year through the development and mass production of vaccines, antibiotics, wonder drugs and medical equipment.
Capitalism, moreover, does not merely take existing scientific knowledge and put it into practice; capitalism also incentivizes additional and ongoing scientific discovery that will also be put into practice, further improving human life.

What Is Capitalism
Capitalism is freedom. In other words, capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, in which all property is privately owned.

In the words of Ayn Rand: “The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.” [3]

Capitalism develops insofar as individuals are free to exercise their rights and choose to exercise them. In addition to being based on individual rights, capitalism is further characterized by the pursuit of material self-interest, saving and capital accumulation, exchange and money, the profit motive, the freedoms of economic competition and economic inequality, the price system, economic progress and a harmony of the material self-interests of all the individuals who participate in it. [4]


More Capitalism = Higher Life Expectancy
Today, capitalism has at least some presence in nearly all nations of the world. It does not exist (and has never existed) anywhere in a full, perfect, and complete form. Wherever capitalism exists, it is mixed with statism. Statism is a social system based on the violation of individual rights because it forcibly subordinates the individual to the state. Statism includes communist, socialist, fascist, theocratic, simple dictatorship and “welfare” type systems.

The extent to which a nation embraces capitalism, as opposed to statism, is the extent to which it is free, prosperous, modern and peaceful—that is, supportive of human life. One need only look at life expectancies around the world to see that this is true.[5]
Current life expectancy in nations where capitalism has (or recently has had) a significant presence -- abbreviated list.
82 -- Australia
78 -- United States
82 -- Japan
81 -- Israel
80 -- Italy

Current life expectancy in nations where capitalism has only modest presence -- abbreviated list.
71 -- Philippines
66 -- Russia
70 -- Honduras
65 -- Pakistan
72 -- Egypt

Current life expectancy in nations where capitalism has little or no presence -- abbreviated list. (It should be noted that these nations receive significant aid from capitalist-leaning nations and would almost certainly have even lower life expectancies without this aid.)
59 -- Senegal
53 -- Nigeria
62 -- Cambodia
48 -- Zimbabwe
64 -- North Korea


Capitalism Is Benevolence
The engine behind capitalism’s ability to generate economic progress and the longer life expectancies that result is the division of labor and the protection of individual rights. When individual rights are protected, each person is free to pursue his or her own self-interest and own benefit—as long as he or she respects the individual rights of others.

This means that, under capitalism, a person can only obtain the cooperation of others voluntarily through trade, not through force. In other words, a person under capitalism, according to economist George Reisman:
“…must show [others] how cooperation with him is to their self-interest as well as his own and, indeed, is more to their self-interest than pursuing any of the other alternatives that are open to them. To find customers or workers and suppliers, he must show how dealing with him benefits them as well as him, and benefits them more than buying from others or selling to others.”[6]

For example, Henry Ford did not force people at gunpoint to buy his Model T. He attained customers, and thus benefited himself, because his automobile appealed to the self-interest of consumers because it was superior to other options open to them, such as the horse and carriage. Voluntary exchange for mutual benefit, which this is but one example of, is institutionalized under capitalism – helping to result in continuous improvement of people’s well-being and standard of living.

Under capitalism, there is only a harmony of rational self-interests because a person is only able to benefit himself by showing that he can benefit others. In other words, capitalism is benevolent.


Protects Link Between Reason and Survival
More fundamentally, capitalism leads to economic progress and longer lives because it is based, not on faith or fantasy, but on reality and facts—specifically the objective requirements of proper human survival.

Capitalism recognizes that virtually everything that human life requires is ultimately a product of human reason. A capitalist society protects this link between survival and reason by upholding one’s liberty to act upon one’s own rational judgment.

Therefore, it’s no wonder that the countless achievements that make human life secure and enjoyable were created in nations where capitalism had significant presence. To name just a few of these achievements: air travel, refrigeration, radio, television, nuclear power, medical cures, indoor plumbing, the motion picture, the telephone, the light bulb, the computer, and the automobile.

And it's no wonder that life under capitalism becomes increasingly secure and enjoyable. When human reason is free to operate, it is limitless in its ability to solve problems of human survival and to continuously improve the quality and longevity of human life.

The development and spread of capitalism raised the expectation of life at birth in the world from roughly 26 years in 1820 to 66 years in 2000. And assuming capitalism is not thwarted, life expectancy will likely rise to at least age 75 by 2050.[7] Capitalism clearly makes the earth more and more habitable and friendly to human life, not less so.

It’s also no wonder that, under capitalism, human reason thrives in the form of economic planning. Capitalism, indeed, represents the opposite of chaos in that it is characterized by an immense amount of projection and preparation. For example, every day there are countless businesspeople who are planning to expand or contract their firms, who are planning to introduce new products or discontinue old ones, and who are planning to open new branches or close down existing ones. And every day there are countless workers planning to improve their skills, change their occupations or places of work, or to continue with things as they are. And every day there are countless consumers planning to buy homes, cars, computers and how to use the goods they already have.[8]

From its rational foundation to the limitless and remarkable achievements, advances and economic planning that take place under it, capitalism is clearly the system of reason and for reason—and, therefore, the system that makes most of human life possible and worth living.


Capitalism Is Justice
Capitalism’s critics often say that capitalism is “cold” and “unfeeling.” This criticism is unintended praise because what it really means is that capitalism is just.

Justice is granting to each individual that which he deserves. Capitalism is the system of justice because it requires that every person must pay his own way. In other words, under capitalism, no one deserves something from others (via the government), such as health care, housing or a bailout, because he needs it. Under capitalism, a person deserves only what he has earned through trade (mutual and uncoerced exchange) with others.

Just as need, whether it be your need or the need of others, does not permit you to rob your neighbor, need under capitalism permits you no handouts from the government. Government handouts are made possible by forcibly taking through taxation your neighbor’s property. Capitalism makes no distinction between such wealth redistribution by the government and theft committed by a private citizen. Both under capitalism are prohibited because both are unjust and violate individual rights. (People in need under capitalism would have to rely on charity voluntarily provided by others.)

Being the system of justice, capitalism rewards virtue, not vice. Rationality, self-responsibility, achievement, initiative, creativity, productiveness, competence and other rational virtues are all ultimately rewarded under capitalism. Irrationality, dependence, idleness and incompetence, among other vices, are not.

Given that rational virtues are practical, it should be no surprise that capitalism is the system, not of stagnation, but of upward motion resulting in economic progress, rising living standards and increasing life expectancies for every level of the population.


Why Controversial?
If capitalism benefits humanity so spectacularly, then why does it have so many enemies? There are two main reasons why capitalism is controversial.

The first reason is ignorance. The American educational system has generally failed to provide students with a basic understanding of all subjects, including the subject of capitalism, its actual history, characteristics and accomplishments. Elsewhere in the world, educational systems generally teach capitalism from a Marxist or post-modern perspective, resulting in a warped and even outright false view of capitalism. One widespread consequence of this ignorance is that the failures of statism are often attributed to capitalism, and the successes of capitalism are often attributed to statism.

The second and more fundamental reason that capitalism is controversial is the influence of religion. Religion, particularly Western religion, tends to hold that a life of poverty is ideal, that profit is sin, that money is the “root of all evil,” that self sacrifice and suffering are virtuous, that humanity is basically bad and does not deserve well-being, that liberty is undesirable because it unleashes man's corrupt nature, that one should serve God and or others as opposed to pursuing personal happiness, that creating the goods upon which human life depends is “materialistic,” that the mind/soul and body are in conflict, that this life on earth is a “veil of tears” and a prison to be escaped, and that one should turn off one's mind and have unquestioning faith in some higher power.

Capitalism, by contrast, is based on a non-mystical, rational worldview. This worldview holds that wealth and abundance are desirable, that earning a profit is a virtue, that humanity is basically good, that liberty is a requirement of humanity’s rational nature, that the pursuit of happiness, rational self-interest and personal success is moral, that creating material values is heroic, that the mind/soul and body can be in harmony, that this life on earth when lived properly is good and even heavenly, and that fully using one's own mind and independent rational judgement is proper.

The worldviews and values of capitalism and religion are clearly and fundamentally irreconcilable.

It should be no surprise then that capitalism was born in and is a product of one of the least religious and most secular, rational periods of history: the Age of Enlightenment (1700-1800).

If a person today is non-religious, however, or even opposed to religion, this alone is not sufficient to make him an advocate of capitalism. The reason for this is that religion has existed for thousands of years. Its worldview, as a result, has had time to permeate and influence every part of life and every person to at least some degree. Even people who are non-religious or opposed to religion often do not escape religion’s influence and consequently accept key tenets of religion into their belief system. Their rejection of religion, in other words, is often superficial. As a result, these individuals often reject capitalism and embrace statism.

Statism and religion both ultimately share the same basic values; both enshrine and demand self sacrifice (for religion, self sacrifice for God; for statism, self sacrifice for others or the state) and unquestioning faith (for religion, faith in God and His word; for statism, faith in the state or ruler).

Capitalism will not be broadly accepted until (1) ignorance about capitalism is replaced with knowledge and (2) the religious worldview is replaced fully, not merely superficially, by a rational worldview.


Conclusion
Capitalism is the greatest social system both ethically and economically. It lifts people out of foulness and into prosperity. It is based on the recognition of individual rights. It is inherently and profoundly benevolent and just. It is in harmony with humanity’s rational nature. It makes most human survival and happiness possible. Capitalism is, in short, one of the most beautiful words that can be spoken.

Everyone on earth should fight for capitalism as if his or her life depends on it because, in fact, it does.

Further Reading
Two Cheers For Capitalism?
Capitalism and Economic Growth
Answers -- Life Expectancy
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Atlas Shrugged
The Capitalist Manifesto
Economics in One Lesson
Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (large file)
Why yes, we searched long and hard through the slums of Lagos and the vast oilfields, but only turned up meager traces of capitalism. It's almost as if someone is hoarding it all. Oh if only there were a way of fairly distributing the capitalism so that everyone can share it... If only.

I really don't have much to say about this entry. I mean, what's there left to say or what do I even need to dispute in their wild statements that the stupidity oozing out of them doesn't do for me already?

Well, besides that I think they might have confused "Capitalism" with "Industrialization". But hey, that's an easy mistake to make.